What I Experienced at the EPC General Assembly

I returned last night from the General Assembly of the Evangelical Presbyterian Church. This is a national meeting of a Presbyterian denomination that began a little over thirty years ago. Currently, it is has over 300 congregations. This is a conservative number because there are an unknown number of congregations transitioning into the EPC and that number is increasing. We learned that it is conceivable that the EPC will reach 1,000 congregations within the next ten years. Most of this growth will come from new congregations begun with existing congregations who offer a core number of their members who branch out to form the foundation of a new congregation. The PC(USA) suffered a net loss of over 80,000 members in 2011. We have lost members at this same level from the mid-1960s forward. We just dropped below 2,000,000 members which is less than half what we had fifty years ago.

I heard some anxiety expressed by individual members of the EPC about the rate of growth. One of its greatest strengths is its high level of trust between congregations and their larger church. Some fear this trust will decrease with this rate of growth. Unlike the PC(USA), where a minister may never be voted to attended a General Assembly as a commissioner, in the EPC every minister attends every General Assembly and every congregation sends at least two Ruling Elders to every assembly. In the PC(USA) a congregation may send an elder commissioner only two times in a century. This means the General Assembly has an establish institutional history known to its participants. In the PC(USA) only the staff and the activities enjoy this advantage over commissioners. I met six of their past GA moderators and enjoyed a wonderful conversation with each one of them. 

This intentionally high level of participation may explain the high level of trust  a congregation has for the decisions of its General Assembly. At the PC(USA) the number of items to vote on may be in the thousands. At the EPC, that number is fewer than fifty. Most of the recommendations from standing committees are bundled up and voted on with one voice vote. There were short floor debates on two recommendations but these were civil and the speaker’s views were respected by others who differed in their conclusions. There was no sign of close door strategy meetings by a group with a controversial agenda item.

One of the reasons for the difference in the number of votes and volume of business is that moral statements which have political implications are kept to less than five issues – all of which were settled at the first few General Assemblies. They encourage their members to reach their own conclusions regarding the hot button issues of our day. This is in stark contrast to the PC(USA) who have well paid lobbyist in Washington DC and at the United Nations in New York City. Both these agencies generate much business for the General Assembly to debate and vote on.  My denomination has multiple studies and statements on everything from protection of snail darters to labor disputes between unionized tomato pickers and Taco Bell. We have or still boycott Taco Bell for not paying higher prices for their tomatoes and Caterpillar Tractor for selling their equipment to Israel. We are counseled to refuse to purchase anything produced by the Nestles Corporation because some activists among us think they discourage women from breast feeding.

While the PC(USA) has dozens of national staff members who organize and generate reports and recommendations on hundreds of social and political issues. The EPC is an inverted pyramided. The congregations form the top and the General Assembly takes its directions from them. While the PC(USA) owns a five story building for their national offices, the EPC rents a few offices rooms in the suburbs of Detroit.

They do have a disproportional number of mission workers in the United States and Internationally. Many of whom were present at the assembly. Several times a day, some such mission workers were allowed fifteen minutes to report on what God is doing in their various fields. Every speaker, regardless of their position, prayed before he or she addressed the assembly. At the core of their endeavors was an great concern for gathering the lost into the gracious presence of their Savior.

There were no “special interest” groups planning their tactics to “win a vote” or out maneuver their fellow commissioners. At the committee members there were long lines of speakers to tug at the heart strings of the commissioners in an effort to influence their out of a vote. The differences expressed turned not on matters of essential substance but on how best to find a way to accomplish that God was leading them to do.

At the worship services you did not see New Age spirituality or political messages, but straight forward presentations of the glories of God and the truth of the Gospel. Some messages challenged those gathered to greater commitment, while others were meant to minister hope and grace to the brokenness of those gathered.

I often felt a sense of sadness, when I realized how many assemblies I have attended and left feeling spiritual depleted. This one left me be filled with hope for the future of the Reformed movement within Christ’s holy Body.